


Body & Soul

by Hexiva



Category: Legion (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Trans, Being Trans in the 80s, Canon Queer Character, Canon Queer Character of Color, Dated terminology, Everyone Is Confused And Everything Is Awkward, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Genderswap, Internalized Transphobia, Slurs, Trans David Haller, Trans Female Character, internalized ableism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 09:23:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16323566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hexiva/pseuds/Hexiva
Summary: Ever since he switched bodies with Syd, David has been aware of a pervasive sense of wrongness. He tries to talk to his friends (and a few enemies) to understand what's going on.





	Body & Soul

**Author's Note:**

> I should note that I wrote this story with the idea that Legion is set in the 80s, which is part of why everyone in this fic is so confused. The other part, of course, is because they're on Legion.

It starts, as so many things in David’s life do, with Syd. He kisses her, in the hospital, and suddenly he’s in a different body, looking at himself through her eyes. 

Afterwards, every time he he looks in the mirror, he gets startled by his own reflection. He expects to see long hair, and wide hips, and a woman’s eyes. Instead he sees a tall, scruffy man with short hair and manic eyes. 

He starts shaving more often, and cutting his hair less.

* * *

“Hey, do you ever, you know, when you swap bodies with someone, do you ever - do you ever feel weird in your own body afterwards?” David asks Syd, nervously.

“Yeah,” Syd says, not making eye contact. “Of course I do. I told you - I don’t think of it as my body. It’s just a rental car.”

David shifts uncomfortably. That’s not quite what he’s getting at. “Do you ever feel like your body is, is not right? Afterwards? Like it should still be the other person’s?”

Syd frowns at him. “Are you saying my body isn’t right?”

“No!” David says, hurriedly, putting his hands up in a ‘stop’ motion. “No, no, no, it’s just, I’ve been feeling like, like this is somebody else’s body, or, or  _ should  _ be - look, nevermind, it’s, it’s nothing.”

Syd looks away. After a moment, she says, “They all feel the same to me. Bodies. After awhile they kind of blur together. It’s just, you know, it’s the way things are. You get used to it.”

“Oh,” David says. He shifts again. He is uncomfortably aware of the shape of his own body. “What if you couldn’t get used to it?” 

Syd shrugs. “You have to. Life is like that. You get used to it, or you die.”

“Oh,” David says again. Sometimes talking to Syd makes him feel better. Sometimes it really, really doesn’t.

* * *

He starts growing his hair out. It’s not fast enough for him. He takes to staring at himself in the mirror every morning, trying to convince himself that this is his face, looking back at him. 

“This is a man’s face,” he says to himself, and winces at the sound of it. God, how insecure is he in his masculinity if he needs to say that to himself?

Except he doesn’t feel insecure. He feels - he doesn’t know how he feels.

He hopes this isn’t a new delusion developing. He doesn’t need any more of those.

* * *

He tries Carry next. He hangs around in Carry’s lab while he’s working, summoning the nerve, and finally blurts out, “Do you ever feel like maybe you’re not the right Carry? I mean, do you ever feel like, feel like you should be Kerry? Kerry with a K? You know, like you’re, you’re not the . . . the one who should be on the outside.”

Carry stops his work, frowns, and looks up. “That’s quite a big question,” he says. He’s silent for a moment. “I used to. My - my parents were Native, and they were expecting a girl. So I thought there was something wrong with me, because I was supposed to be Kerry. It took me a long time to get past it.”

“Do you ever - after you’ve been her, do you ever feel kind of, I don’t know, off-balance?” David asks. “Like you’re the wrong size, or, or, the wrong shape.”

Cary shakes his head. “I don’t turn  _ into  _ her. It’s more like she’s, well, she’s inside of me.”

“But when she’s  _ not  _ inside you, does that feel wrong?”

“Not the way you’re describing,” Cary says, slowly. “It’s more like, you know, it can be a bit lonely. David, is everything all right? You sound nervous.”

David rakes his fingers through his hair. “It’s fine. It’s nothing. It’s just - I’ve been thinking. Feeling, really. Since, you know, since the hospital, since Syd - especially since we got Farouk out of my head, really - I’ve been feeling like I should, should be someone else. Or, well, not  _ someone  _ else, but - but something else. Like my mind is fine, but my body is wrong. Well, I mean, my mind isn’t  _ fine,  _ but you - you get the point, I’m rambling.

Cary’s frown deepens. “Someone else? Someone like the Shadow King? David - ”

“No!” David says, hurriedly. “No, no, nothing like that. More like, someone like Syd. Or - or - not like Syd, but someone more . . .” He looks away, crosses and uncrosses his arms nervously. “Um, feminine.”

“Oh,” Cary says, confused.

“It’s not - it doesn’t feel like  _ him,  _ but it could - could be the schizophrenia. You know? Maybe I should just - ignore it and it’ll go away.”

“It doesn’t sound like a delusion,” Cary says, slowly. “It sounds more like - well, you know. Some people are just more . . . masculine. Not that I’m saying you’re not masculine enough! It’s just, I mean, you know. Normal human variation. I mean, we’ve come a long way since Stonewall.”

“Stonewall?” David searches through his scattered, fragmented memories, and finally comes up with a handful of memories - a report on the TV about riots, his friends talking amongst themselves, celebrating or fuming. The raid of a gay bar in Manhattan, riots on the streets. It had all seemed a very long way away, a riot a world away that had nothing to do with David and the voices in his head and his druggie friends - gay and straight. “Oh, yeah. Stonewall.” He puts two and two together, and says, “Oh. You think I’m gay?”

“Maybe?” Cary says, doing his best not to sound awkward and failing. “I mean, it’s, you know, perfectly normal. And you, well, you haven’t had a lot of chance to figure things out for yourself, have you? What with the asylum, and Farouk, and Division 3 and, you know, everything.”

“Mmmm,” David says absently. It’s not such a bad thought. Better than being delusional again, anyway. He used to have plenty of gay friends, back before the asylum. And then there’d been Lenny, and Clark, and they’re fine, right? He likes them. Admittedly they’ve both tried to kill him, but that was - that was not Lenny’s fault, and Clark - it’s complicated. But wouldn’t he . . . know if he were gay? Well, no, obviously not, because he didn’t know he was a mutant or that he had a psychic parasite living in his head, so clearly, he doesn’t know himself as well as he thought.

“Maybe you should talk to Melanie about this,” Cary suggests.

“Maybe I will,” David says, but he doesn’t mean it. He likes Melanie, he really does, but she’s - well, she’s a shrink. It’s not that he doesn’t trust her, really. But he doesn’t want her to think he’s  _ crazy. _

* * *

He turns up in Clark’s office and loiters. Clark looks up at him and shifts his computer screen so that David can’t look at it, which David wasn’t planning on doing and which wouldn’t stop him if he wanted to snoop. It’s a gesture. David loiters some more, starting to regret his decision but not quite willing to back out.

Finally, Clark looks up from his computer and says, “You’re staring, David.”

“How did you know you were gay?” David blurts out, and immediately regrets it. He’d kind of meant to ease into the topic. He’s not good at this.

Clark’s eyebrows go up slowly. David seriously considers teleporting out. But Clark apparently decides to answer. “It was a long time ago,” he says. “Before you were born, probably. There was this boy . . . he was a year older than me, red hair, bright green eyes . . . It was just a schoolboy crush, of course. But it helped me figure out where I was going in life.”

David tries to remember if he ever had a crush on a boy. He’s not even totally certain he’s ever had a crush on a girl, before Syd. There was Phil, yes, but he can barely remember how he met her. He scrubs a hand over his face, annoyed by the gaps in his tattered memory. 

“You okay?” Clark asks, frowning slightly. “You look like you’ve got something on your mind. I hope this isn’t going to be a  _ problem.” _

“What?” David said, absently. “No, no, no, I don’t have a problem. I mean, I do have a problem, but I don’t have a problem with you. I mean, I have a problem with myself.”

“I see,” Clark says, turning away from his computer to frown at David. “A mutant problem?”

“No - or, well, I don’t think so,” David says, pacing back and forth in front of Clark’s desk. “More like a human problem. I think I might be gay. How do I tell if I’m gay?”

“Being interested in boys is the usual symptom,” Clark says drily.

“But how would I tell?” David says, stopping his pacing to stare at Clark. “He - it - the parasite - it made me forget so much. For all I know, I could’ve gotten married and divorced and forgotten all about it. There are  _ gaps.”  _

Clark shrugs. “Then don’t worry about the past. Think about the present. Is there a boy you’re interested in  _ now?”  _ Clark looks thoughtful, and then guesses, “Ptonomy?”

Ptonomy? Well, David supposes he  _ is  _ the only eligible man around here. “Not really,” David says, rubbing his forehead. “I’m mostly interested in Syd.”

“What makes you think you’re gay?” Clark asks.

“It’s just - I don’t know, since I, you know, I switched bodies with Syd - I haven’t felt . . .  _ right.”  _

Clark looks confused. “I wouldn’t say being gay feels  _ wrong.  _ I mean, I suppose if you’re brought up to think it is, it would.”

“It’s not like  _ that,”  _ David says, hurriedly. “It’s more like - I don’t know. It’s more like I don’t feel like I should be a man.” 

Clark shakes his head, slowly. “I certainly don’t feel like less of a man just because I’m married to one. It’s not like my husband is ‘the man’ in the relationship. We’re just both men.”

David scratches his head. He feels even more confused than he started out.

* * *

Well, it’s not as if Clark is the only gay person he knows. He knows, uhhh, there was V.M. - no, he died of an overdose, didn’t he? There’s Batty Jacobsen - no, she’s still in Clockworks, he can’t go back there. There’s Joanie - no, he hasn’t seen her since  _ before  _ Clockworks.

Actually, he hasn’t seen hardly any of his friends since before Clockworks. Except Lenny, who doesn’t exist.

Or does she?

Hmmm . . .

* * *

The illusory villa is as bright as before. Farouk and his prisoners live in an eternal summer day. David wonders if the house even has an inside to it, or if they spend all of their time by the pool.

“Ah, David!” Oliver says, lifting a glass to him from where he reclines under an umbrella. “I’ve been meaning to ask you - are you a tenor? You see, Lenny and I, we’re starting a - ”

“ - a barbershop quartet, yes, we’ve had this conversation before - can I talk to Lenny, please?”

“We have?” Oliver frowns. “I must have forgotten. I think I do that a lot. Forget.”

If David thought it would work, he would grab Oliver and teleport out. But he can tell, just by looking, that this place, this idyllic summer day, is as much a cage as the coffin Farouk once shut him in - and a lot sturdier. “Listen,” he says, “we’re coming to get you, as soon as - as soon as - as Farouk gets his body - ” He hates that he’s helping the parasite. Can he even promise to help Oliver, if the cost is the end of the world? If that’s what Syd tells him? “Look, that’s - that’s not what I came here to discuss. I’m looking for Lenny?”

Oliver shrugs. “I believe she’s in the garden shed.”

David frowns. “Did Farouk shut her in there?” Maybe it’s some kind of psychic metaphor.

“No, I believe she went in of her own free will,” Oliver says, pointing to an elegantly painted little building. “As much as anyone ever does anything out of free will. Have you ever considered - ”

“Thanks, Oliver,” David said, hurrying past towards the ornate shed. He doesn’t have much time - sooner or later, Farouk is going to make an appearance, and he wants to talk to Lenny first.

He opens the shed door. While, from the outside, it looks as luxurious as the rest of the villa, inside it just looks like a shed. It also looks peculiarly simplistic, compared to everything else - as if Farouk hadn’t put as much thought into designing this place.

Lenny is crouched in a corner, her hands over her ears, her back against the wall. She looks up at him with wide eyes. “I can still hear him,” she says, with a little manic laugh. “Even in here. He’s everywhere. In the air and, and the water, and the food.”

_ Oh.  _ David swallows, and sits down next to her. “I know,” he says. “He did it to me, too. For thirty years.”

“Thirty years.” Lenny laughs again. There is absolutely no humor in it. “Guess I’m just weak, then. All you, you mutants, or gods, that’s what he calls you, gods - thirty years, and I’m losing my marbles after one year. Dumb human shit, right? That’s all it is. Just human shit. Nothing important.”

“I’ll get you out of here,” David promises. “One - one way or another.”

“Will you - will you talk to him?” Lenny begs. “He - he listens to you.”

“Noooo,” David says, slowly. The thought of asking Farouk for anything, for a  _ favor,  _ gives him the heebie-jeebies. “You don’t know what he’s like, if I ask him to let you free he  _ never  _ will, he’ll just, just eat you alive and laugh at me from your - corpse - ” He grips his head with both hands, trying to fight off the vivid image of the fake Lenny, rotting in front of his eyes and laughing in Farouk’s voice. 

“Don’t - don’t go psycho on me, man,” Lenny says, forcing her voice to be steady. “Listen, you’re my only lifeline, that Oliver guy, he’s even crazier than I am. You gotta keep it together and get me out of here.”

“I will,” David promises. “If he doesn’t let you go I’ll - I’ll squash his head like a coconut and pull you out of his brains.”

“Wow. Vivid imagination. I like it,” Lenny says. She laughed, a broken, unstable sound. “Hey, if that image is in my head, does that mean it’s in his too? ‘Cause I’m in his head, right? I hope he enjoys it.” She jerks her head to the side, looking at David almost upside down. “So. Watcha looking for? Found the big guy’s body finally? Or, no, hold the phone, here to dump him? Maybe Blondie told you it was a stupid-ass idea to work with the shit beetle?”

“Uh, no.” David scratches his head with one hand, sheepishly. “Actually, I came to talk to you. Ask you for advice. I mean, we’re friends, right?” Right?

“Hey, if I remember it, it must be real,” Lenny says, with an expressive shrug. “Sure. Lay it on me, kid. Let Auntie Lenny fix your problems. Not like I got anything better to do locked up in here, right?”

“Remember when you were dating that girl - whatsername - Lisa?”

“Dating, diddling, what’s the difference?” Lenny asks, shrugging.

“Right, and she kept saying she wasn’t gay every time, but she kept coming back for seconds? And you said, ‘make up your mind, girl, either you’re a dyke - ’ sorry, sorry, you said it, not me - ‘or you’re not?’”

“Yeah, I mean, it’s kinda hard to bang a gal when she’s straddling the fence that hard.” Lenny makes a face.

“Well, how do you tell? I mean, how do you get off the fence?” David asks.

“You just do, son,” Lenny says, shrugging for the third time.

“That’s not - that’s not helpful!” David makes a face. “I mean, how did you figure it out? You know, whether you were gay or not?” 

Lenny shrugs. “I dunno. I mean, what’s good enough for the gander’s good enough for the goose, right? It’s, not, like, a choice, it’s just like, it’s what fits, y’know? You gotta - you know - go where you wanna go, do whatcha wanna do. I could say I’m not gay, but, you know, what’s the point? No one wants to flick your bean if you’re gonna be like ‘I’m not into chicks, I love dicks’ the whole time. It’s a real turn-off. Like, get your act together.”

David rubbed his hands through his hair compulsively. “I’m trying.”

Lenny looked him up and down speculatively. “What, you think you’re gay? You lookin’ to knock knobs with some guy? What happened to Blondie?”

“Nothing! Nothing. I mean, I’m still with Syd. I’m just, I’m just questioning some things.”

“I mean, she’s kind of a square, but I mean, what’re your options? Look at these guys, Division Three, Summerland, whatever, they’ve all got sticks up their asses. I dunno if switching teams is gonna improve your prospects there.”

David scowls. “Come on,  _ you  _ just said it’s not a choice. It’s not about  _ dating prospects.  _ It’s fine, I love Syd. It’s not about that.”

“Well, then, what  _ is  _ it about?” Lenny fixes him with a stare. “Just ‘cause I’m stuck in the, whatever, Astral whatsit, doesn’t mean I have all day to waffle about nothing. Get to the point.”

“I’m just - you know, since, well, since uh, since the hospital - since, you know, I switched bodies with Syd - ”

“ - and killed me - ” Lenny interjects.

“Right, and, and, I haven’t felt right.” David gets up and paces the tiny shed. “Or, maybe, I don’t know, I never felt right, but then we switched bodies and then I did feel right? And then I went back and - ” He waves his hands vaguely around. “And then it didn’t feel right. My body. My - me. You know?”

Lenny regards him with a thoughtful look. A new sense of understanding seems to come into her brown eyes, a shift in mode, and she stands up, leaning against the wall. “What’s right about Blondie?”

“I love her,” David says, frowning.

Lenny makes a disgusted face. “No, no, no, I’m not talking about  _ that.  _ I’m talking about, like, the hardware, the gear. Her - y’know - ” She wiggles her ass. “Body. You said it felt, what, right? It’s just a body, right? What’s the difference?”

David shifts uncomfortably. “I mean - it’s, you know, it’s different. I mean, it’s weird, right? Being, you know, and she’s my girlfriend, and she’s a woman, and it’s, you know, it’s different. Different, you know, hardware. And, you know, the shape’s all different, and the, the height, and - okay, I am  _ not  _ talking about my girlfriend’s body with you.”

“So it felt right ‘cause it was a woman’s body,” Lenny says, raising an eyebrow.

David crosses his arms, uncrosses them, and then crosses them again. “I mean, it sounds weird when you put it like  _ that,”  _ he says, defensively. 

Lenny shrugs. “Does it? Men, women, bodies, minds, it’s all just a bunch of meat, right? What’s it matter which one you were born with?” 

David swallows, looking anywhere but at her. “It  _ feels  _ like it matters.”

“Of course it does, kid. You’re young. You haven’t got your shit sorted yet. Bodies?” Lenny shrugs. “Who gives a shit, right? It’s just a, like, a flesh-suit. It’s like, it’s like, it’s the bowl. We’re the soup. And this? The Astral Plane? It’s the pot. We’re all just, you know, melting together. You wanna be a chick? You are one.”

“I don’t  _ want  _ to be a, a chick, that would be - weird - ” David starts, but Lenny just rolls her eyes and clicks her fingers.

David’s perspective shifts, and suddenly, he’s standing where Lenny was, and he’s looking back at himself, standing on the other side of the shed, grinning down at him. He puts his hands to his head, and finds himself touching Lenny’s messy brown curls.

“Feel right now?” his double asks him, grinning and, god, is that actually what his grin looks like? It’s  _ scary,  _ why is his grin scary?

“Yes,I - I mean,  _ no,  _ ” David says, flailing, “Lenny, what the - what - how did you - you’re not a telepath, how did you  _ do  _ this?”

His face laughs back at him. “C’mon, idiot, put it together. I know you’re not as dumb as you look.”

A chill goes down David’s spine, and he freezes. “You - you’re - ”

“I’m me,” his double says, laughing. “This is my  _ mind,  _ you dimwit. I’m Oliver! I’m Amahl! I’m Lenny! I’m you! I’m whatever I want to be. I’m  _ God.  _ And God doesn’t give a shit about bodies.”

“You’re not  _ God,”  _ David argues. “You’re just - some  _ guy - ” _

“Am I?” the Shadow King asks, his stolen eyes glittering with mischief. “A guy? That’s not what you said when you thought I was Lenny.”

“That - that wasn’t  _ real,  _ it was just a, a trick - ”

“What’s real?” the Shadow King asks, shrugging. “That body lying in an egg-shaped coffin somewhere on the other side of the world? Is that me? No. I’m more than that, that corpse. I’m the ghost in the shell, the god in the machine. If not the body, then what makes me a man?”

David scowls. He hates how the tapeworm always wants to give a speech. Can’t he shut up and get down to trying to take over the world, or whatever, for once? David doesn’t need the lecture. “I didn’t come here to, to argue about gender with you, Farouk!”

“Didn’t you?” the Shadow King says, raising David’s eyebrow back at him. “C’mon. That’s exactly why you came here.” He imitates David’s voice. “‘Lenny, Lenny, help, I think I might be gay!’ Oh, boo-hoo. You’re, what, thirty? And you’re wandering around like a teenager going ‘who am I? What am I?’ Grow up.”

“Yeah, I might’ve had a chance to deal with shit when I was a teenager,” David says, with biting sarcasm, “Except, you know, I had a psychic leech living in my brain making me think I was crazy.”

“Yeah, keep blaming it on me,” the Shadow King says, mocking. “That’ll make all your problems go away.”

“I’ll be happy if it makes  _ you  _ go away,” David snaps, and shoves past the parasite, barging out of the shed.

Amahl Farouk, the middle-aged man in the suit and the sunglasses, is right in front of him, reclining on a pool chair with a drink in his hand. David whips around to look behind him into the shed, and finds that his doppelganger is gone. He puts a hand to his chest, and the vague sense of wrongness lets him know that he’s back in his own shape.  _ Good,  _ he tells himself.  _ That’s a  _ **_good_ ** _ thing. _

“ _ Cela semble  _ _ toujours  _ _ erroné, non?”  _ Farouk asks, smiling up at him and lifting his drink, as if to toast David. “Your body. As if the flesh did not match the spirit. Well, perhaps it doesn’t. Would that be so terrible?”

“I am  _ not  _ having this conversation with you,” David snaps.

Farouk shakes his head, sorrowfully. “It is such a shame, how you have grown up denying yourself. Look at you! You have spent thirty years seeing into minds. And yet you refused to believe in your own power!”

“Because - because  _ you  _ kept making me forget!” David hisses, his hands curling into fists. 

Farouk ignores him. “If you had grown up as I did, knowing and understanding the contents of men’s hearts, you would understand. The body does not define the self.  _ Il y a des hommes. Il y a des femmes. Il y en a d'autres.  _ Bodies - well, they are irrelevant to this.”

“What are you saying - that I’m a, a, a woman in a man’s body?” David asks, scowling.

Farouk shrugs. “You would hardly be the first. Your friend, Lenny, she knows this; she lives on the edges, where the outcasts are drawn. So did I, once.” He smiles his deceptively peaceful smile. “You would not know it to look at me, no? Mmm, the world was a very different place back then. Perhaps a better one.” He shakes his head. “Not here, but in my country - perhaps.” 

David thinks of his own life, people looking at him like they think he’s going to stab him, fear or pity in every mind, like he’s a monster, like he’s not a real person - all because he sees things, because he does terrible things and then forgets them -  things  _ Farouk  _ forced him to do. His lips curl in a sneer. “What would  _ you  _ know about being an outcast? You’re - what did you call it? You’re  _ God.”  _ His tone is mocking. 

Farouk shakes his head. “You know nothing of me, my dear.  _ Zendigi man _ .  _ Tajarbayat man." My life. My experiences.  _ " Do you think you are the only child who has ever grown up with voices in his head? The only man who has ever found himself a stranger in his own country?” His smile grows. “Ah, but is that the right word? ‘Man.’ Tell me, does this word refer to the mind or the body?”

David eyes Farouk suspiciously. “ . . . the body,” he says, after a long moment.

“Then what am I?” Farouk asks him, spreading his hands. “Am I a man?” 

“A parasite,” David snaps.

Farouk raises his eyebrows at him. “And your friend Lenny, too? What about your, mm, your leader - Admiral Fukuyama? They are not parasites, are they? But your friend is bodiless, and your leader inhabits multiple bodies.”

“Lenny’s a girl - when  _ you’re  _ not controlling her, anyway.” David’s not going to get into the Admiral. It’s complicated and he doesn’t want to risk giving Farouk any information he doesn’t already have.

“So,” Farouk says, raising his glass as if to underline his point, “Your Lenny’s identity exists irrelevant of her body.” He shrugs. “Is it so surprising that ours do, too?”

It makes sense. It does, but David’s not going to agree with Farouk, on anything, no matter how reasonable he makes it sound. After all, he made “let’s work together and invade Division Three” sound reasonable, too. “I came here to talk to Lenny. Not you. And I - I talked to Lenny.” Was any of that really Lenny? David wants to believe it was. He wants to believe Lenny exists and is alive. “So I’m - I’m going. I’ll call you when I find the monk.” David waves his hands vaguely in Farouk’s direction. “Don’t  - don’t do anything - don’t do anything horrifying, okay? Just - just don’t.” He turns around and stalks off towards the door that appears behind him, somewhat cartoonish and misshapen due to a lack of attention on his part.

“Remember,  _ ma chère _ ,” Farouk calls after him. “Once you understand that you are God, you can become anything.”

David slams the door behind him and appears back in his body. It’s only after he’s pulled himself out of the tank and gone to put his clothes back on that a buried memory of a highschool French class surfaces, and he realizes that the word Farouk used for him -  _ ma chère -  _ was feminine.

He’s not sure how he feels about that.

* * *

He’s sitting in the cafeteria, drowning his sorrows in waffles and trying his best to forget that Amahl Farouk exists, when his eye catches on one of the Vermillion.  _ Why mustaches?  _ he thinks. Of course, he knows women sometimes have them, real women, flesh and blood women. But the Vermillion aren’t real women; they’re androids, or something like that. It was a choice, to make them look like women and then to give them mustaches. Making some kind of point, that the Vermillion are neither men nor women. 

_ Your leader inhabits multiple bodies,  _ Farouk had said.

Fukuyama was born a man, and they chose to use female bodies to represent themselves. It occurs to David for the first time that someone else at Division Three might feel the same way he does. 

Before he’s really conscious of making a choice, he’s wolfed down the last of his waffles and stood up. 

He makes a couple of wrong terms, but eventually he finds his way to the room where Admiral Fukuyama works, or lives, or whatever it is they do. The door is guarded by two Vermillion, and they stare at him as he knocks on the door.

The door slides open with a  _ whoosh,  _ responding to the Admiral’s electronic thoughts, and David walks in. 

He stares at Admiral Fukuyama, the machine that bleeds, and the Vermillion circling the room stare at him.

“Why have you come to see us, David Haller?” asks one of the Vermillion, after the room has been silent for some time.

“It’s - I - well - It’s personal.” David scratches his head nervously, and tries not to think about what it must feel like to have a computer inserted into your brain. “I mean, if that’s okay. I mean, I know we’re not - you know - close - I mean, I know you’re a busy - uh - person -  and I - you know - but I didn’t really know who else to talk to about it, and I thought, you know, with the mustaches and all, I thought you might understand. Or - or know something about, uh, whatever it is, it’s not, I don’t  _ think  _ I’m gay, that doesn’t make sense. You know?”

The Vermillion stare blankly back at him. After a moment, one says, “Start from the beginning.”

“Okay. Okay. Uh, well, it all started when I switched bodies with Syd. And it was - it was weird, but, it also felt - right?” David waits for a response from the Vermillion. The Vermillion stare back at him. “And then afterwards I started to feel not . . . right. You know, I, I forget about the whole thing, then I go to look in the mirror, and I’m surprised, because this doesn’t look like - me.” He winces. “I know, I know that’s weird. But I thought - well - you might - maybe that happens to you too? Because you, you, I mean, you’re the Vermillion, but you’re also . . . you. I mean, you must have a face under that, that basket, right?” He looks hopefully around at the Vermillion.

There was a pause. And then, one of the Vermillion says, “We understand you.”

“When we were a boy, we felt the disconnect,” another Vermillion says, “The soul and the body, out of sync. The desire for transformation. They offered to transform us, and we accepted, but the change was different. The caterpillar becoming the beetle, still wishes to be a butterfly.”

“So what did you do?” David asks.

“We spoke to the doctors. There were solutions, surgeries, hormones. We were offered the transformation of the shell. But it was too late. We were not the shell anymore. We were the guiding principle. Our face was Division Three. A face without a body. So they built us the body.” The Vermillion put their hands to their chests. “We chose the symbolism. The male and the female, intertwined. Androgyne. This face is the true one, because we choose it.”

David frowns. “But I don’t have that . . . choice. I mean, not except on the Astral Plane.”

“You have the choice,” one of the Vermillions says.

“You choose the performance, the role you play in the dance,” says the other. “The body exists, but the labels are chosen. The pronoun and the proper nouns. And then there are the doctors. The transformation can be yours too.”

“Transformation?” David asks, without really understanding. He’s still stuck back on proper nouns. Proper nouns are names, right? And pronouns are “he” and “she” and “they” . . .

“The doctor can help you. Melanie Bird.”

“Doctor Bird?” David shifts, uncomfortable. “I mean . . . she - she’s got enough on her plate. She - she hasn’t been well.”

“Grief cuts the bonds between, set adrift alone, lost at sea,” a third Vermillion says. “She needs an anchor. So do you.”

David shakes his head, urgently. “No, I . . . I don’t want to bother her. Besides, she - well, I’m just, you know, she was the one who told me I wasn’t crazy. I don’t want to - change that.”

“Dysphoria is not insanity. Insanity is not a crime.” 

David looks away and scrapes his hands through his hair. “I know, I know, I just - I want them to trust me, you know? You know, I was gone for a year, and then, everything changed, and I just want - You know.”

“Insanity is not distrust. Distrust is dishonesty.” 

If David didn’t know better, he’d think that the Vermillion were giving him a dirty look. He crosses his arms around himself, defensively. “I’m not being dishonest.” 

“Honesty starts with understanding the truth. Understand who you are, and truth will follow.”

* * *

So, uh. Understanding. Names. Pronouns. 

If he’s - no, she’s - if she’s a woman then her name can’t be David, right? That’s, that’s mixed - labels, like Fukuyama said. Except Fukuyama uses mixed labels on purpose, should David be doing that too? She’s not sure she likes that idea. 

She rubs a hand over her upper lip. She doesn’t think she’d look good in a mustache. That would be, that would just be silly. 

So, names. How do you name a girl? Well, after her mother, maybe, or her grandmother. But her mom is - not around, and her grandmother died in the - well, you know, in WWII, David doesn’t like to think about it. Maybe you just look at a list of names and pick one.

She asks Clark if she can go off-base to buy some books. Clark is predictably suspicious, and David winds up going shopping with the agent trailing after her, watching her with a sharp eye. She buys a couple of books he remembers reading when he was younger, and stuffs the baby names book in between two novels. Either Clark doesn’t see it, or he doesn’t choose to comment on it - and David’s grateful for that.

* * *

“So you came back,” Melanie says, leaning up against her nest of pillows. 

“Y-yeah,” David says, nervously. “I’ve been back for a few days now. Remember, Syd came to tell you?”

“Not back to Summerland. Back here.” Melanie pats the floor. “So, when are you leaving again?”

“I’m - not planning on leaving?” David says. Her eye catches on Melanie’s vanity mirror, and she tries to avoid her own reflection’s gaze.

“Oh, don’t give me that, son,” Melanie says, resignedly. “You heroes, you men, you always leave.”

“Uhhh, yeah, about that . . .” David says, edging surreptitiously towards the vanity. “I’m not a - uh - ” Her nerve fails her. “I’m not a hero,” she says. 

“Oh, of course, of course,” Melanie says, sighing. “We have to be humble, of course. Can’t - ever - make time for being human. God forbid the hero be selfish.”

“Are you, um, feeling okay, Dr. Bird?” David slides one of the vanity drawers open, just out of Melanie’s sight. She fumbles around inside. Her hand closes around a lipstick tube.

“Why does everyone always ask me that?” Melanie asks, faintly annoyed.

“Well, because - ” David starts, and is almost grateful to be saved from that conversation by Melanie’s hand darting out to seize her wrist.

“Sticky fingers, son,” Melanie says, her eyes suddenly sharp and aware.

“I, uhhhh . . .” David says, her eyes wide. She’s scrambling to come up with a lie.

Melanie pulls David’s hand out of the drawer, her fingers still clutched around the lipstick tube. “If you’re looking for a gift for Syd, you should try getting her a new one,” Melanie comments, raising an eyebrow at David.

“It’s not for Syd! I wouldn’t get her a - a - listen, it’s for - it’s - I just thought I could - try out - you know, without anyone knowing and it’s - it’s - ” David drops the lipstick. “Look, it was a - it was a stupid idea, okay?” 

Melanie picked up the lipstick, put it back in her vanity, and closed the drawer. She sat back down against her cushions. “Sit down, son.”

“It’s actually - it’s not -  ‘son’ - so much - can you call a girl, a, a, woman, can you call her ‘daughter,’ like that?” David starts running her hands through her hair, compulsively. “I don’t think so, it would sound funny. I mean, that’s weird, isn’t it?”

Melanie looks up at him, her eyebrow still up. “Sit down. You’re rambling.”

David sits down.

“So, you were trying to steal my lipstick,” Melanie prompts.

David takes a deep breath. She’s getting kind of sick of having to explain everything from the start. “Back at the hospital, I - Syd and I, we - switched bodies, I guess? And I was her and she was me. And then afterwards, I was - confused. I felt off-balance, like, like I was in the wrong skin. And then it didn’t go away. I keep, like, I’ll go to brush my hair out of my face, and it’s not there, because it’s Syd’s hair. And we were only switched for a couple of hours, and it’s been - well, it’s been weeks. Uh, years, for you. Well, one year. So I talked to a, to a couple of people, and Clark said I wasn’t gay which, I mean, I get that, that - that makes sense - and then I talked to the Admiral, uh, to Fukuyama, and he, I mean they, said it’s all about symbolism, and that’s why they use the Vermillion, with the mustaches and - that - so I thought, what’s like a mustache but the opposite? And I thought I’d try putting on some lipstick, you know, in private, see how it felt - but Syd doesn’t wear it and I didn’t want to have to ask Clark to take me shopping, he’d ask questions and I don’t - I don’t really know what the answers would be?”

“Slow down,” Melanie says. “Now. Is this about Syd? Or is it about you?”

David runs a hand through her hair. “I guess - it started when I was in Syd, I mean, in Syd’s - b - when we switched places.” She frowns. Did it? Was that really the first time? How would she know? She’s felt out of place her entire life.

“Do you want to be Syd?” Melanie asks, evenly. “Or do you want to be a woman?”

David swallows and looks away, looks anywhere but at Melanie. She can’t say ‘I want to be a woman.’ It sounds too weird. “Well, I don’t want to be  _ Syd.  _ If I was Syd, then - I mean, that would just be weird. She’s my girlfriend.”

“Okay,” Melanie says, nodding. “So this isn’t about Syd. This is about you. Are you familiar with the term ‘gender dysphoria’?”

“Uh, you had me with ‘gender’ but then you lost me,” David says, apologetically. 

“Gender dysphoria is defined as ‘a sense of discomfort and inappropriateness about one’s anatomic sex,’” Melanie explains.

“Oh.” David’s heart sinks. That . . . that sounds about right, actually. “Does that mean I’m - that I have another - that I’m crazy?”

“No!” Melanie says, quickly. “Or at least, not the way you mean. Transsexualism isn’t a delusion.”

_ “Good,” _ says a voice inside David’s head,  _ “‘Cause you’ve got enough of those.” _

_ Shut up,  _ David tells it. 

“It’s more of proprioceptive sense of . . .” Melanie gestures vaguely. “Identity. You know who you are, and I know who I am.”

“ _ Do  _ I know who I am?” David asks, doubtfully.

“I don’t know,” Melanie says. “Do you? That’s the question, isn’t it?” 

David goes through the book of names. Alex? Too ambiguous. Agatha? No, that sounds like someone’s aunt. Amal? Absolutely not. (She stops her reading, carefully tears that page out of the book, and throws it into the trash can.) Barbara? Nope. Gabrielle? No, she’s pretty sure she actually  _ does _ have an aunt named that.

She pages back through the book and finds the names that most closely resemble her own.  _ Daaaa . . . Dav . . .  _ Davida? No, that sounds ridiculous. Delilah? The book says it means ‘delicate, weak, languishing,’ and David’s not sure she likes that. Delphinia? Sounds like someone’s  _ great- _ aunt. Dolly? Nope. Dove?

. . . Hmm.

She looks up at the mirror, looks herself in the face, and says, “Dove.”

_ From the English word for the variety of bird, seen as a symbol of peace,  _ the book says. 

“Dove,” she repeats. 

The hair is still wrong. The shape of the face, of the body. But the eyes - those are hers. Those are Dove’s. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for reading! Please, if you feel up to it, leave kudos or a comment. Constructive feedback welcome!


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